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Monday, December 13, 2010

Why I'm not complaining about the snow.

I kinda like the snow. When I lived in the ATL or K-town, I'd get sad when it would snow but not stick; something that happened several times every winter. I guess I still subconsciously associate snow with getting to stay home from school.

Indy seems to get about the right amount for me. It rarely sticks around for more than a few days at a lick, and they get the streets cleared pretty quickly, so even with the Zed Drei on summer tires I'm only homebound for a few days out of the year. Living where I do, that's no great hardship since I can easily walk to grocery stores and whatnot. (And if it were, I could at least go to all-season tires...)

10 comments:

McVee
said...

The snow's OK. All I want is an attached garage so that I don't have to clean cars off before work. Ever. Heh. I could be like Neville busting out of the garage past the Family. Except they were snow mutants...but I digress.

Here in Minnesnowta I'd settle for a garage into which I could get more than the wife's Miata and my GoldWing...the Subaru lives in the parking spot on the alley, and the truck lives on the street.

The foot-and-a-half we got Friday night/Saturday has been interesting. The Tundra's 4-wheel drive seems to work just fine, since I had to plow snow hood-high (and that's a TALL hood) just to get a running start to break out of the plow-turds left by the single pass of the plows through our street.

There's not a single snowblower left for sale in the Twin Shitties.

But for me one of the more interesting things is that when we got snow storms like this when I was a kid, it was an incredible opportunity to make money, with no more investment than a shovel (and the food my parents fed me). I'd go around offering to shovel out walks, driveways, plowed-in cars...whatever I thought I could do. I'd come home exhausted, but rich (well, for a kid, that was rich). Snow was like money from heaven. You can't find a neighborhood kid to do ANYTHING any more.

What's even more interesting are the beggars at the freeway exit ramps, holding the "WILL WORK FOR FOOD" signs. Offer one of 'em $10/hour to shovel snow, and you'll get a look of utter incredulity, followed by obscenities.

In all fairness, as I remember it from my time there the snowblower market in MN is surprisingly small. It basically consists of people who recently moved to MN, people whose snowblowers have stopped working since the previous year, and people whose children have recently moved away from home. Pretty much everybody else has one already.

No, I've got TWO...one is the big honkin' 8-horse, 2-stage inherited monster, brought out only for snow like this. The other is a single-stage, 2-stroke snow-broom that handles everything up to about 8" worth.

I end up blowing out my neighbor on one side (she's a nice, slightly older widow). And in a storm like this one, once I've got the big-un running I just take a couple of passes all the way up and down the sidewalk on the whole block, since we live in the middle. What the heck, once you've got it running and around to the front, it's no extra trouble to just take a few passes, and the neighbors appreciate it.

I'm just planning for the neighbor-interview after the SWAT team takes me off the roof of the gubbmint center, "He was such a NICE man...always shoveling and blowing off the sidewalks".

If you have a big snoweblower like that it's astonishing how much credit & goodwill you will get for simply cleaning away the "end of drive plow mound".

If people with small blowers appreciate it when the big dog rolls over and does it a minute.

People , ( ok, snowbelt people who like winter) in my experience don't mind the shoveling so much as they loathe the plow compacted ridge at the end the driveway which has the density & approximate consistency of wet concrete.

I hate snow, but then, I hate winter in general, and all the steel in my leg really hates cold. Soon as the economy bounces back, I'm moving to central Florida, to the wife's hometown, & I'll only have to see the white shit about once a decade. Look out, Polk County!

I have not dug out my car for over 3 years now since I moved out of the lake effect snow belt in NW IN to Vegas. Now If I want snow I can drive 45 minutes up to the mountains and I love it.

One of the really funny things is that having grown up in the lake effect snow belt of SW MI/NW IN I thought that I'd seen it all snow-wise. Now that I live near mountains its a whole other story dealing with chains and pass closures.

Please, not another winter like last year. 1 in a hundred people here in the DC area know what snow is and how to drive in it. They close the schools for an inch and a half. At 6 inches people abandon cars on the roads and freeways!

Well, up here in Purdue's back alleys, I could stand a bit more snow and would be mighty happy to have it around until late March.If you could find a way to send your unwanted snow up here, rather than letting it melt, I would be much obliged.